17

The Long Road to Joy

Could it have been any worse? On top of the all-night marches through the jungle, the skimpy food, the seventeen terrifying gun battles, the absence of all privacy, the lack of toiletry items, the blackout of information from the outside world, the constant filth, the daily disregard for one’s person and values . . . was this as bad as it gets?

I appreciate the perspective of Matthew Henry, the godly English pastor and devotional writer who lived some three hundred years ago. One day while traveling from one town to another, he was beset by a band of highwaymen who mugged him and took all his money. In his journal that night, he wrote:

Let me be thankful, first, because I was never robbed before;

Second, because though they took my purse, they did not take my life;

Third, though they took my all, it was not very much;

Fourth, that it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed.

Well, that’s a mature way to look at atrocity. I suppose I could say in a parallel vein that at least I had never been taken hostage before . . . I did escape with my life . . . and I was not the terrorist but instead the one who was terrorized.

On a practical level: Yes, I suppose it could have been worse. For example, what if I had been pregnant? The added burden, both physical and emotional, would have taxed me perhaps to the breaking point. One of the hostages who was forced to become the mistress of group leader Janjalani declared at one point that she was pregnant. That was enough for even the hard-hearted Abu Sayyaf to release her.

Jesus, in his discourse about the future, spoke about a coming time when Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies, and the residents would need to run for their life. “How terrible it will be for pregnant women and for mothers nursing their babies. For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people” he said in Luke 21:23. Any woman can imagine the feeling of running along the rough roads, gasping for breath, dragging children and a few belongings, heart pounding in her chest.

When our Lord spoke those words, I can’t help wondering if, in the back of his mind, he was thinking of his own mother, Mary, who had made a torturous eighty-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem during her ninth month of pregnancy. Any of us who have borne children will groan at the thought. The traditional paintings show the young Mary riding across the plains on a plodding, thump-thump-thumping donkey . . . ouch. But in fact, neither of the Gospel writers who tell the Nativity story (Matthew and Luke) says a single word about a donkey. This is pure embellishment in our imaginations. For all we know, Mary may have walked the entire distance alongside Joseph. The trip would have taken at least four days, if not longer . . . all to comply with the bureaucratic demand of a faraway Caesar who had picked this month, of all months, to conduct a census.

And yet, on a whole higher level, God was about the business of doing something magnificent. A few hours after the baby’s delivery, an angel showed up to tell the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone!” (Luke 2:10). Joy? In the wake of utter exhaustion? After everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, from travel timing to lodging problems? Mary quite possibly knew not a soul in this strange town of Bethlehem, let alone a knowledgeable midwife; this was, after all, Joseph’s home turf rather than hers. She had gone through one of the deepest valleys a woman can cross with hardly a friend to hold her hand.

I remember times in the jungle when I said to Martin, especially in the later months after many of the other female hostages had been ransomed, “I just need another woman to talk to. Don’t be offended; I know you’re doing your best to help me and lift my spirits. But I’m surrounded by men. I need a woman friend.”

Mary had none, so far as we know. Even the infant she delivered was a boy.

And this was an occasion for joy?

The following week, Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in Jerusalem a few miles away for ceremonial requirements. There an aged man of God named Simeon noticed them. In his comments to Mary, he said specifically, “This child . . . will be the greatest joy to many” (Luke 2:34, italics added).

At times, it is hard to see cause for joy in our life. When circumstances have conspired to wear us down, to drain our patience, to dash our hopes and dreams, we feel within us the very opposite of joy. We are frustrated, depressed, and even sometimes resentful.

Only the long perspective, the divine perspective, can bring back the joy to our heart. Only when we remind ourselves that “God is for us” (Romans 8:31), never against us, can we rise above our immediate feelings. The fact that we celebrate Christmas as a season of “joy to the world” is because we now have the big picture. We see what God was up to all along. Out of confusion and distress he has brought salvation and hope.

*   *

Martin was always the one who handled the outdoor Christmas decorations in our family. He had the know-how and the patience to string lights along the eaves and make our house attractive. Once I became a single parent, I knew this just wasn’t going to happen anymore.

A few months after I got home from captivity, my daughter, Mindy, my mother-in-law, and I went one Saturday to the annual craft fair in Hillsboro, Kansas, a town about sixty miles north of where we live. It’s a festive time; they block off the downtown streets so people from all over the United States can display and sell their handiwork. Alongside the tables, there are food stands as well: funnel cakes and caramel apples, pies and chowder being sold by church groups . . . it’s a delightful atmosphere.

Strolling along through the crowds, I spotted a set of oversize wooden letters— J , O , Y —painted red with aluminum anchor posts attached to the back so that they could be pushed into the ground of the front yard at Christmastime. The letters were nearly three feet tall. The O had a silhouette in the middle showing Joseph and Mary leaning over the baby Jesus.

I looked at the letters and thought, Surely I can handle this. I would rig up a spotlight in the grass to draw attention to the letters in the long December evenings. So I bought the set and took them home.

After Thanksgiving, when Mindy and I went out in the yard to place our display, we soon found that the winter ground was hard as a rock. We couldn’t begin to push the aluminum rods down into the soil. Even this “simple” Christmas decoration was not going to be simple for us.

We got out a water hose and began soaking the ground, until it softened enough to let us anchor the three letters. We set up the spotlight with an extension cord from the garage and then went inside, proud of our success.

Within a day or two, people in Rose Hill began commenting when I’d see them in the post office, the grocery store, or Pizza Hut. “Gracia, I just love what you did to your house! There’s this shadow of joy all over the front—it’s so striking.” I didn’t quite know what they were talking about, until I went out to the street that night to take a look from a distance.

The spotlight sitting down on the grass was throwing a huge image of J-O-Y onto the front wall. It was the coolest thing. The silhouette of the Holy Family, in fact, was centered right on Zachary’s bedroom. When I went inside to look at Zach’s window, the part I could see was of Joseph bowing in prayer over the Child. How appropriate for my fatherless son.

Mindy and I had not planned any of this strategic placement. But what could characterize this household more, I thought, than the joy God has given us after a horrible thing happened? We are full of joy, and it’s God who has done it by sending Jesus.

And then I thought of the familiar words of Jesus: “You are the light of the world—like a city on a mountain, glowing in the night for all to see. Don’t hide your light under a basket! Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine for all. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father” (Matthew 5:14-16).

At the end of the long road of distress and pressure and upheaval lies the possibility of joy after all. We may not sense it at first, but God is at work behind the scenes. In time it will burst forth to warm our hearts and those of all who watch us.